Naev News

We are proud to announce the 0.8.1 release of Naev. This fixes some important issues found in 0.8.0. Due to popular demand, time constant (previously known as time dilation) has been reduced significantly. We don’t expect there to be many remaining issues, but if you do find any, please report them at the issue tracker. Discussion about the game can also be had on Discord (discord invite).

Changelog:
* Gameplay
- Lowered large ships’ time constant (renamed from time dilation) by 50% of the deviation from 100%.
- Tweaked Za’lek ships’ stats and outfit slot behavior to match expectations.
* Engine
- Restored macOS support. (Catalina users will have to bypass Gatekeeper: See https://github.com/naev/naev/wiki/FAQ for details.)
- Fixed a crash-loop when the “saves” folder gets populated by Steam data (or other files) and no Naev save files.
- Fixed intermittent error messages about the “Lua Spawn script for faction ‘Trader’”.
- Fixed rare/potential bugs in font and save-file code.
- Fixed crash when navigating landing screens with the tab key.
- Updated German translation.
- Improved text in minor ways.

We are proud to present the 0.8.0 release of Naev! This has over 4,000 commits from 0.7.0 and has been under development for the past 3.5 years. The backend and interface has been revamped to be modern with lots of improvements all over the board. Some examples include unicode and internationalization support. We would like to thank all the contributors who have participated in this release.

Some of the more notable gameplay changes include making missiles and fighter bays not require ammunition, changed how some pilots spawn, time passes faster in larger ships, and a revamped commodity/economy system.

We don't expect there to be many issues, but if you do find any, please report them at the issue tracker. Discussion about the game can also be had on Discord (discord invite).

[h2]Full changelog:[/h2]

[h3]Gameplay[/h3]
* Overhaul of the interface to be more sleek and functional
* Interface is much more slick
* Dark theme to be more consistent with space
* Font uses outlines to be more readable
* New map overlay with adjustable opacity
* Added rarity indicator to ships and outfits
* Changed fonts
* Indicate non-common NPC with exclamation marks
* Added accessory slot and unique accessory outfits as mission rewards
* Simple economy model implemented with map visualizations
* Added travelling merchant who sells unique items
* Made missiles and fighter bays reload while in space
* Modified the balancing of missiles
* Added asteroids and mining
* Improved player GUI
* Brushed GUI is now the default
* Improved and fixed escort system
* Made Pirates and FLF spawn in a fairer way
* Made time pass at different rates for different ships ("Time Dilation")
* Made piracy missions available from any Independent or black market planet
* Substantially increased pay for unique missions (10x in most cases)
* Made references to the player gender-neutral
* Made combat music vary from faction to faction
* Made it so AI ships spawn with cargo
* Improved AI behaviours
* Nerfed Quicksilver
* Added the ability to buy "fake IDs" from pirate strongholds
* Made jammers into activated outfits that increase cloaking
* Added Soromid organic ships that level up organs
* Improved and expanded NPC portraits
* Commodities can be sold/bought everywhere
* Added a "slow mode", which runs the game at half speed (like an easy mode)
* Added a ship log which records events
* Added a "system map" which displays information about known remote planets
* Added support for giving commands to individual escorts
* New intro images replacing old placeholders
* Increased pirate name variety for bounty missions
* Ships now travel with you automatically for free, as with outfits
* Added map decorators showing locations of factions and the Nebula
* Added a dogfight aiming helper
* More music
* New and/or improved missions
* New Za'lek mini-campaign
* Completed the FLF campaign
* Fixed up the Collective campaign
* Improved the Shark (Nexus Shipyards) campaign
* Improved the Dvaered anti-FLF campaign
* Added and improved piracy missions
* New minor Soromid campaign, "Coming Out"
* New tutorial mission at the start of a new game
* Various newly added and improved generic missions

[h3]Engine[/h3]
* Support for compilation with Meson
* HiDPI-awareness
* Support for translations
* Added shaders to speed up and improve graphics
* Added support for non-ascii direct character input
* Added support for map decorators
* Removed support for Lua 5.0
* Removed support for SDL 1, only SDL 2 is supported
* Added support for translating
* Made the OSD compact itself to avoid showing redundant information
* Made Autonav able to follow ships
* Consolidated the effects of cloaking and jammers under cloaking
* Added workaround for ALSOFT buggy version that crashes
* Added a polygon-based collision algorithm
* Added some symbols for partial colorblind accessibility
* Support #include in shaders
* Multiple font support
* Many bugfixes

It so happens that instead of having things cool down and prepare for the release, development has instead accelerated with 1473 commits from the previous beta. For this reason, we are going to do a final beta for 0.8.0, aiming to release full 0.8.0 by the end of this year. We would like to say that we don’t anticipate too many issues with this beta, but given the amount of code changed anything can happen. For this reason, please try it and find any issues, please report them at the issue tracker. Discussion about the game can also be had on Discord (discord invite).

Note that to try this beta you have to opt into the beta from the game property menu.

Some changes from 0.8.0-beta.3:

• Overhaul of the interface to be more sleek and functional
  
• Interface is much more slick with a dark theme to be more consistent with space
  
• New map overlay with adjustable opacity
  
• Improved AI behaviours
  
• Nerfed Quicksilver
  
• New Za’lek mini-campaign
  
• HiDPI-awareness
  
• Support for translation
  
• Support for compilation with Meson
  
• Many bugfixes
  

We have some exciting news for you all. First of all, we have made the game soundtrack publicly available as a steam soundtrack. This should be accessible from the store page. These are all songs included in the base game, but just bundled differently for easier listening.

Next, as we work hard on the new 0.8.0 version with a lot of changes, we have automated the entire system so that now betas and nightly builds are available on steam! You will have to right click on the game in your library and opt-in to either the beta or the nightly. The beta will consist of the latest manually tagged beta release, while the nightly is built every night using the latest source code! Due to this, expect to find bugs and issues in both. That said, we would love to hear about the issues you encounter and thoughts about some of the new mechanics.

If you try either the beta or the nightly and find any issues, please report them at the issue tracker. Discussion about the game can also be had on Discord (discord invite).